When True Simplicity is Gain'd

Right now, Daughter is in her room, attending an online history class. Consort is at the kitchen table, at a meeting on Skype. I’m hiding in the office thinking up a blog which looks very much like gazing at pictures of breaded-cats on the Internet. And here, next to me, is a rainbow Slinky. The rainbow Slinky is the embodiment of why no one is ever invited to my house.

After thirteen years in this house, we still don’t have dining-room chairs. We don’t have dining-room chairs because we got the table at an estate sale and needed to buy chairs, but in the times we can afford chairs we can’t agree on them and when we find the right chairs the cars develop neurasthenia and need some time in a sanatorium. We do, however, have a rainbow Slinky which was gifted to the child at some point in the past. She walks around the house, idly Slinking, leaving it wherever it stops being relevant. I point it out to her, she picks it up; sometimes it even goes back to her room for a while. But then a day or two pass and I step into the shower and lo, rainbow Slinky is wrapped around the conditioner. Anything which actually requires thought before purchasing doesn’t get purchased, but the house is filled with random objects which washed up on our shore and have now applied for citizenship.

Here’s another member of the family. Daughter had a science experiment, one involving a straw, a bottle-cap, a CD, and a balloon. I don’t remember what it proved scientifically, but it went up in the air and beetled around and has since proven that something which goes up in the air and beetles around is entertaining about every 94 days and cannot be thrown out. Once it comes out of the closet for beetling-time, it tends to stay out for at least three days, usually on the coffee table. You know what’s never on the coffee table? Coffee. You see that little green rectangle behind the experiment? That’s dental floss, left over from another experiment. Whenever a human in this house thinks a room doesn’t look quite festive enough, we race to the bathroom and get something minty to liven up the place.

Here’s a bookshelf. You can tell it’s a bookshelf because there are four remotes and some Wii-related objects in there. Also, Capturing the Friedmans, a documentary about molestation. We’re going to hope Daughter will never think she’s grabbing the Mario and Sonic Wii game and plays that instead.

Oh, the traditional drawer; Pictures Left Over from Daughter’s Nursery, Needlepoint Frames I’ve Been Given and Perfectly Usable Bits of Wrapping Paper. What, you say you don’t have such a drawer? But then where do you put your roll of pink and green ribbon, your seven marbles and the Christmas ornament you found behind the couch in mid-February?

See that pile? That pile, I’ve been told, means something. I may not throw the pile away, because Consort is just about to take care of it because it’s very important. The pile has remained unsorted for about a year, so a more cynical person might think something like “How important can that stuff be if you can ignore it for a year?” Luckily, I’m not cynical.


People talk about the desk-drawer which collects the random objects; I’m starting to suspect the house is trying to become one giant drawer. There’s nothing which says “Please cross the threshold and be embraced by our warmth” but I comfort (or delude) myself that there’s plenty which says “These people might be bouncing through their lives like a Superball right now, but you can’t say they aren’t interesting.”

Which is true. You also can’t say we don’t own sixteen Superballs, because the cats keep finding them, even after I swear I’ve thrown them all away. But we’re starting businesses, and writing books, getting educated and learning great quantities of things, and maybe the house is just an outer manifestation of the hectic and happy state of our minds right now. If dining-room chairs and dental floss only in the bathroom meant Consort and the kid might not be doing a crossword puzzle together right now, it wouldn’t be worth it.

In sum, no one’s coming over soon but we’ll meet you someplace clean, sane and quiet, and we’ll bring stories from our loud, chaotic lives and together will dream of a day when we manage to be both organized and creative.

The rainbow Slinky will make an excellent file-holder.

But I Can Still Read What You're Thinking

Ursula asked:

What is your best short form response to folks who are puzzled/horrified/curious/judge-y and ask you, "Why are you homeschooling?"  In other words, what's the funny/truthful/self-confident yet non-preachy thing you say when the checkout grocery store checkout lady asks if your daughter is sick (and, hence, with you at 11 a.m. on a Wednesday)... or when your second cousin (president of the PTA) corners you at Thanksgiving, etc.?

 and Nancy Piccione asked:

How do you manage to discuss home education with family members who are confused or have a hard time understanding your decision?

Let's hereafter call this the "PTA president/Cousin" issue because, honestly, the checkout lady isn't going to cause you to lose sleep. If the checkout lady thinks I'm breaking my child, I won't be ecstatic to hear it, but for social interaction that's less troublesome than if she coughes in her hand and then touches my broccoli.

(This actually happened to me. I almost demanded another head of broccoli but decided I was being fussy and that people around the world would be GRATEFUL for coughed-on vegetables. I scrubbed that broccoli, peeled and steamed it, but still got a coughing cold which lasted nearly a month.)

Strangers and acquaintances are going to have ALL sorts of opinions about homeschooling. I don't feel obliged to take any of them more seriously than the woman we saw in the subway in New York who was yelling at us to stop stealing her hair. For the socialization question, I'm tempted to print up 4x6 cards explaining exactly what Alice does every day so a person I will never see again doesn't worry about her welfare. But the fact is, the strangers and acquaintances don't actually CARE care. This is small talk, only one micron above asking if it's hot enough for you outside.  I've found that 90% of checkout lady-level questions can be answered with:

1) She does a bunch of stuff in the afternoons.
2) She has tons of friends.
3) I couldn't teach math, either. Her father teaches her math.

The PTA President/Cousin dynamic is different. Maybe you love your cousin. Maybe you don't love your cousin but have to see her at Thanksgiving and for a week at the lake every summer and would prefer not to have it be weird. Maybe you would secretly LOVE to have it out with your cousin but it would break your mother's heart. The PTAP/C must be treated with respect. I have a variation of that. I have more than the average number of people in my life -- people I genuinely like and admire -- who teach in elementary or secondary school. These people chose to teach; most of them love to teach; and I understand if it appears as if I'm coughing on their broccoli.

Homeschooling in Los Angeles, we have an advantage in that we belong to the Los Angeles Unified School District, an institution only an 8th-generation bureaucrat could love. Fun fact: there are more students in the LAUSD than there are people living in Austin, Texas.  I can say with complete honesty that I love many teachers and respect what they do but I hate having to work within a system that large. No teacher in the LAUSD would begrudge me that. Then I mention how little evidence there is to support the benefits of standardized testing. Another fun fact: one recent study showed that people who do well on standardized tests have a propensity for shallow thinking. Most teachers I know are heartily sick of spending an entire school year preparing for a single, state-mandated test. I end by harkening back to a time when a classroom didn't have 36 students and 35 chairs, when teachers could set their own educational schedule based on, oh I don't know, maybe the people in that classroom, and when everyone involved wasn't stretched, exhausted and prohibited from doing what they were trained to do. I think everyone would agree that such a classroom would bring some homeschoolers back.

People who are dedicated to teaching -- or as with a PTAP/C, devoted to volunteering for the schools -- may think we're sneering at them. I'm not. And even if you are, it's just easier to blame your decision on The System rather than The Teacher. Any person who has worked for any length of time with any public school knows how many hardworking, highly skilled, well-meaning people are bogged down by rules, ordinances, and "this-is-the-way-we've-always-done it" attitudes within these systems. Dinner with your cousin is easier if you praise her to the skies for fighting torpor and bureaucracy and for making the effort to improve the school experience for her children. Hey, for everyone's children. It's important that you understand how what she's doing is worthwhile. And if she continues to want to discuss how you're hurting your children by not having them in a classroom six hours a day, ask about her latest fundraising goals. If I know PTA presidents, that will take you all the way through pumpkin pie.

This is a sweeping generalization but I find most people who have a truly hard time accepting your decision to homeschool have some sort of skin in the game. This choice you made for your family has somehow become about them. If you want some degree of peace, figure out where that anxiety lies and neutralize it. I've had some luck by freely admitting I have no idea if this is a good idea or not, but that since my child appears to be happy, has friends, becomes interested in new things and knows more chemistry than her mother, we're going to continue until the situation warrants otherwise.

And then I excuse myself to get a cup of tea.

Dry Town

Quite a few birthdays ago, Consort asked me what I wanted. I trilled, “I know it’s expensive, but I’d really love a drying rack!”

And then Consort ran away and fell in love with someone who wasn’t the dullest person on the planet.

The end.

Please understand, I didn’t just want a drying rack, I longed for a drying rack. Clothes which don’t suffer the indignities of the dryer last longer and look better. I live in a region that has a rainy season which lasts less time than a pint of ice-cream in my freezer, so you can dry your clothing outside all year. The gas bill would be less. There was no downside to a drying rack except that every time I decided to splurge and buy myself one, I’d get into a self-doubting spiral where I started to question whether I was worthy of a drying rack. Shouldn’t I just drape clothing over lawn chairs like the pilgrims did? Was I just yet another mindless consumer of goods, rampantly buying things like new socks, dental floss, and drying racks?

And then Consort ran away and fell in love with someone who wasn’t the dullest ruminator on the planet.

The end.

No, instead, he bought me exactly the drying rack I wanted. He even got two-day shipping so it could be here in time for my birthday, despite my insistance that cheap shipping was good enough for me, that two-day shipping was more of a Jennifer Lopez thing. The box arrived, I opened it, saw the tops of birch dowels, squealed in delight, and pulled it out.

Tug.

Tug.

Yank.

The drying rack was stuck. I yanked again, harder.

(Because in my world, the first rule of physics is “Any object responds well to mindless force.")

The drying rack sprung halfway from the box; from within the box was a horrible sound, a breaking sound. I tugged more gently. Now, how to explain this. The drying rack is created so that when you’re not drying, it folds flat, which means it’s basically a series of hinged wooden X's. When they had put my precious in the box, one of the hinges on one of the X's got stuck on something inside. What it got stuck on I’ll never know, because my brutal yanking could bring down bridges, but somewhere between my upper-body strength and the stuck thing inside, I created something akin to a spiral fracture in one of the structural elements. I stared in dismay. I had dreamt of a drying rack for nearly a decade and broke it before I owned it for ninety seconds. This is why I can’t have nice things.

Consort, as he frequently does, fixed the problem I created, forming a sort of steel plate around the spiral fracture. Now the drying rack didn’t open without incident, but it worked well enough, drying my family’s clothing in pervasive California sun. It took some extra wiggling to get it into position, but I took that as the cost of being me, with the jerking and the hubris of thinking I was worthy of a drying rack. Besides, I consoled myself, someday it would fall apart because of this initial indignity, and then maybe I’d get myself a new drying rack. This time, I’d let Consort open the box.

More than a decade has passed. I think I’m strongly recommending this product, because it’s still with us. It’s working, but I can’t say it’s exactly attractive while doing so. I refer to it as Our Invalid. Every week, I tiptoe it out and gently unfold it. The assorted dowels hit the ground like ripe fruit in a windstorm. I reassemble it, gritting my teeth as Side-A, freed of the dowels, gracefully wilts against me as I’m trying to stabilize Side-B.  Dr. Bunstein views this as the high point of his week, because dowels sometimes roll under the hedge and they are very delicious. If I don’t weigh the clothing equally around the rack, it collapses on my foot, leaving wet clothing on the grass. Each week for the drying rack is a race against gravity and chaos. I’d complain more, but the gravity and chaos is of my making and, frankly, every week is a race against gravity and chaos for me as well. So we age together, not always attractively, but I appreciate its endurance and its quiet acceptance of my flaws. When it falls on me, it seems like the mildest sort of payback.

Sometimes, though, late at night, I click open the new drying rack page on my browser and I gently touch the screen, noticing how stable their drying rack appears, how whole. I whisper, “Someday,” and then I go to make sure the cats aren’t batting a rogue dowel around the laundry room.

Summertime, and the livin' is easy...

I rarely offer helpful parenting suggestions, mostly because I suspect my readers know too much about me to take anything I say beyond “Buttered toast? Yes!” seriously. But here goes; if you need to buy a present for a two or three year-old, might I suggest some big lightweight scarves? I got Daughter some for Christmas the year she was two and she played with them a bit on Christmas day before lunging at a new present, which I can only assume was cat-related.

But in the following days, and months, long after the wind-up toys had been sprung and the small toys had been lost and the age-appropriate toys had been grown out of, the scarves abided. They were girl-wardrobe, and stuffed-animal wardrobe and pet-wardrobe; they were tents and casts for pretend broken legs and rivers for her finger-puppets and things to pitch at your mother when she was being especially annoying. In retrospect, they were the smartest things I ever bought her. Why do I bring up the scarves? Am I trying to burnish my own parental halo? No, and I’ll prove it by balancing the scarf-business by telling you that Daughter had an ice-cream sandwich for dinner two nights ago. No, I mention the scarves because they, and every other item of her childhood, are currently in active use in my living room.

Daughter went to a Montessori school early on, and was carefully inculcated into the idea of putting things back once you’re finished with them. Our house isn’t large, so I eagerly (less enlightened souls might say “Maniacally”) encouraged this behavior at home. When she doesn’t put things away, I trot out my worn and aged speech about respecting our things by treating them well, putting them where they belong, Mother gets weak and fretful when she can’t see the floor in your room, tra la la. And then came the move into the living room where, it has been noted, there isn’t any “Away” into which to put things.

For the first couple of weeks, I was the shouting micro-managing parent, pointing to different horizontal spaces and saying things like “Create a system! A system of…piles!” And then I grew very tired. It was hot, and every tool Consort used was loud or dust-generating. The air-compressor made a noise like thousand bullfrogs burping twelve times an hour. A pile of Barbie clothes stopped seeming so important. Then the Barbie clothes developed a satellite of paper dolls, which begat a construction of her wooden blocks (which had been my blocks and my mother’s blocks). I stepped over things, and I ignored. Once I choose to ignore, I am very good at it. Some times, I would walk into the living room and I would think “What a dreadful place. I wonder who lives here.” And I would go on ignoring.

The dining-room, rendered unusable by her mattress and dresser, generously donated its dining-room table chairs which, covered with a scarf, became a clubhouse for the pets. The dog would only go in if Daughter went in first and the cat would only go in if immobilized by another large scarf, but no matter. At last count, there at fifteen books of hers in various states of reading dotted around the room. Nearly all of her dress-up clothing is strewn about, in case she is walking between books and suddenly needs to become a hula dancer.

And I don’t care. It’s temporary and no one can say it isn’t generating creativity. There are daily productions for me to see which involve singing, dancing, light comedic patter and the liberal use of scarves. I can’t say as I am always up for an afternoon at the theater but -- as with certain little-theater performances of friends I have been forced to see over my lifetime -- I keep a pleasant smile on my face and use that time to make a grocery list. And, unlike the performances of friends, Daughter doesn’t make me get a drink with her afterwards and dissect her performance. She doesn’t need to hear what I thought of her; she knows she was fabulous.

Consort is now at the wallpaper stage of the renovation, which means we’re not too far from the end. He swears she’ll be back in her room this week, Friday at the latest. I, being of a less credulous mind, translate that to mean she’ll be back in her room next Thursday. Either way, house-as-playroom model will come to an end. There will be all sorts of new and organized places to put her things. We’ll blow the renovation-dust off the books and put them into their new bookshelves; the construction toys will be boxed up and put where they belong. The scarves will have their own scarf-spot. Our living room and dining-room will no longer resemble the inside of my daughter’s mind. I will be relieved, and I will be a little bit sad.

And I Have No Privacy

"Quinn, where are you?"

I'm right here.

But so is everyone else.

I don't want to brag, but I can write with a certain amount of chaos going on around me, which is good, because this house is never actually quiet, or restful, or spalike, unless there is a spa I am unaware of staffed by flatulating pets. But ever since we've gotten back from New York, the house has upped its game. There is no rest for the wicked and there is no quiet for the writer.

First, there is Consort, who I am thrilled to say is working on something large and complicated. It's better in any measurable way when he's working on something large and complicated. I'm less excited to note that he's working on something large and complicated at home. Most days, he's got at least two online meetings to attend, which require quiet, so he takes over the bedroom, pushes out the pets and persists in speaking of "Net Present Value" like that's actually English. When he's not doing that, he's taking a class at Coursera, which he swears is interesting but I assure you is not. It is, however, is difficult, so he needs quiet to watch his lectures and study.

Speaking of studying, there is the kid. We're still home-schooling, but I'm not the main teacher this year, which bodes well for her future earning potential. Instead, she's in online classes, which is working fine but since she's live and intermittently on-camera in these classrooms, I have to remain a) out of sight and b) quiet. Right now she's in Chinese class which, being a tonal language, sounds like this to me:

"Shang-DO. Shang-DO.  Shang-DO. Shang-DO. Shang-DO."

Later, I will be told by Daughter that those are completely different words, words which sound totally different, and that my ear is made of mud. I'll grant her that if she allows that I show a certain graciousness in giving up my kitchen for hours at a time five days a week. Sometimes I bask in this world we live in, where my daughter can have classmates all over the world without taking off her fuzzy-socks, but mostly I just look bleakly down at my empty cup of tea and wish I had installed a hot-plate in the bathroom.

So someone is has annexed the bedroom and is talking in there, and someone else has annexed the kitchen and is talking in there; where can I work? Can I work in the office? Well, I can try, but one of the aural house-quirks is that people murmuring in the kitchen are bellowing in the office:

"SHANG-DO, SHANG-DO, SHANG-DO, SHANG-DO."

(Silence. I put my fingers on the keyboard to write about the cats.)

"NEXT PAGE! SHANG-DU, SHANG-DU, SHANG-DU..."

Which is when I hide in the kid's room, a place which is technically quieter, but not if you count the shouting in my head. Imagine that the night before, you had told your daughter to clean up her room because the clothing free-ranging across every single horizontal space was provocative, but in the annoying way. Imagine you came in a half-hour later and the clothing was off the floor, the bed, the dresser, the hamper and the blinds. The drawers were closed, leading you to assume they were filled with clothing.

(Because you also believe passionate clapping brings Tinkerbell back to life.)

 But now, having sat down on the bed with your laptop to write, your ankle touches something under the bed; you lean over and discover all of your daughter's clothing under there, scrunched up and melding with cat fur. You are now left with what to do with this information. Do you grab the child from class to have her clean this up? No, you do not, because while taking care of her clothing is important, you're still convinced the reason you loathe and fear math is because you missed that one week in second grade when you had pneumonia. What profiteth Daughter to gain folded clothing if she loses the quadratic equation? What you should really do with this clothing is just put it all in a bag and tell Daughter that if she's that careless with her clothing, it obviously doesn't matter that much to her and take it to children who will care for their clothing. THAT would be a bracing experience, only a quick glance in the drawers indicates she'd be left with rainbow toe-socks and a Christmas sweater from two years ago. Even if she worked back her clothing one item at a time she'd never be dressed in time for practice this afternoon and you all desperately need to be away from each other for at least an hour today. No, best to just make this a learning experience, and by that of course I mean a droning lecture. But it's virtually impossible to sit in a room which is filled with an incipient lecture and write about anything but thankless children who apparently need to be sent to volunteer at an orphanage in Africa for a year or so.

Which is when the laptop and I head to my bathroom, which should be quiet. Cool, too, which isn't nothing here in Los Angeles these days. I could sit on the toilet and bask in the cool, echoey silen...

Oh. Hi, Diana.

This is Dumb Cat. There was controversy in our house for a while as to whether she is fat or not. I stand squarely on the side of "Big-boned, just with a freakishly small head" camp; God knows there isn't much brain there. She frequently walks behind the open door in the hallway, gets stuck between the door and the wall and wails until someone picks her up and turns her around, towards the light. Diana likes to spend about half an hour a day walking around the bathtub, meowing. I may remove her from the tub, but as inexorable and mystifying as the eels returning to the Sargasso Sea, she will go back there. Kick her out of the bathroom and she stands at the door and screams. Best to just let her finish her religious ritual and then spend the afternoon being frightened of an extension cord. Not exactly conducive to writing in there, though.

The dining room has no chairs, but I could bring in a chair were it not for how much of the sound bleeds through from the kitchen ("SHANG-DI, SHANG-DI, SHANG-DI. New page. SHENG-DO, SHENG-DO, SHENG-DO.")

The living room is a possibility, but the dog is in there, making noise. Oh, my poor old man. First, we thought the scratching was just the allergies and then it turned out his thyroid has gone into the Witness Protection Program, so he began thyroid meds. One of the side-effects of this medication, I have come to find out, is that he pants constantly, noisily. He also stinks, partially because he is old, partially because the AWOL thyroid dries out his skin and partially because he's on fish-oil and salmon-based food to help his skin. The combined effect kind of makes him smell like a dumpster at the cannery. Also, he still itches because of his allergies, so there's a lot of scratching going on. Between the panting, the scratching-leg thumping, and the general canine miasma, he's a lot more of a presence than I need when I write, not the least of which because I'm doing the math of "Can he have his next Benadryl? Did he spit out this mornings's thyroid pill? Didn't we just wash him, like, two days ago? How does he already smell like Thai food left in a hot car?"

So please know that while sometimes when I am not writing blogs I'm off cavorting and frolicking and enjoying the pleasures of my estate near Lake Como, mostly I'm just drifting about my house, desperately in pursuit of a room of my own.

Green leafer madness.

So…

very….

sleepy.

Want to…write, but so very…very…sleepy.

And cross.

So…

very…

cross.

Also, achy.

For a long time, I would drink a cup of tea in the morning and pour a second one into my lap, and I was fine and only slightly scalded. Slowly, imperceptibly, I began making myself a third cup of tea before noon, which I would actually drink and only spill about a quarter. Then, one magical day, I noticed Daughter’s after-school classes all seemed within walking distance of a Starbucks, and each one of those Starbucks would give me a cup of tea if I gave them about two dollars! It was dazzling to discover how much less bleak and uncomfortable folding chairs are when one is clutching a hot cup of water with some leaves in it.

Things between the tea bag and I were good until they weren’t, and yet I denied, denied, denied I had a problem. It’s green tea, I would think stubbornly, I’m strengthening my tooth enamel and possibly my immune system. What could be more wholesome than that?

I was so unaware of how often I carried a cup that I stopped noticing when I was carrying it in less than traditional places. Luckily, I live in Los Angeles, where it is now socially acceptable to carry a Starbucks cup anywhere including a funeral; I think some people now request their bodies be displayed with one tucked in their hand, so their friends will recognize them.

I was so jacked up on caffeine that, by last week, I was causing static on the car radio. Bed had become the place where I lay in the dark and tried to remember my third grade teacher’s license plate number.

But, as with so many issues in my life, it was vanity which finally brought me to my senses. You can only drink that much caffeine for so long before your skin starts to dry out. Last Thursday, I looked in the mirror with entirely too much daylight streaming in, and I recoiled in horror. While I have never found myself especially cute, I have taken some comfort in looking young for my age. I was the color of a battleship and the first three layers of epidermis were making a break for it. I was no more than twelve hours away from someone complimenting me on my lovely granddaughter.

Fine, I thought grimly, no more tea for me. I’ve done this before. A day or so of unpleasantness and fatigue and I’m back in the game. A few weeks off the stuff, and I can start a cup of tea in the morning again.

I forgot the last time I had given up caffeine was when I found out I was pregnant, which leads to two important facts. One, that was a while ago, and my body isn’t as accepting of change as it was then and two, I was newly pregnant, which meant I was excited, self-sacrificing and already nauseated and tired. Now, I’m suspicious, self-serving, and inclined to avoid things which make me nauseated and tired.

Friday morning, I drank a cup of mint tea, just for that hot-water mouthfeel. By noon, I was working at my desk, clawing at the headband I was wearing, wondering why it was biting into my head so sharply when I remembered, Wait, I’m not wearing a headband. Caffeine withdrawal, right on schedule and nastier than I remembered, holding my skull hostage all afternoon. The elastic band tightened indifferently and inexorably, and grinding exhaustion set in. I abruptly fell asleep on the couch and dreamed about washing down a pound of dark chocolate with a hot-tub full of green tea. I dreamed about going to a rural area of China, plunking myself down in the middle of a field of Camellia sinensis and chewing my way out. I dreamed about George Clooney stopping by in a tuxedo, bringing me a cup of tea, and my drinking it. George asked, eyes crinkling adorably, “Would you like anything else?”, and I screamed miserably, “Yes! More tea!”

“What, Mommy?”

I woke with a start. The headache was, if anything, worse than when I fell asleep. I had been trying to read a magazine when the exhaustion had hit, and I had fallen asleep on it, and sweated so the magazine stuck to me. This meant Katie Holmes was pouting a quarter inch from my eye, which wasn’t helping matters. Daughter was standing next to the couch, staring at me. I was asleep on the couch in the middle of the afternoon, leaving my small daughter to her own devices. She appeared to have made herself a snack of strawberry jam and olives. All this tableau needed was a smoldering Virginia Slims dangling from my lips.

After two daytime naps, I fell asleep at eight p.m. My last thought as I reflexively clawed at the non-existent headband was “This will be better in the morning.”

Moron.

What it has done is mutated into what I keep thinking must be the beginning of the flu, complete with body aches, lethargy and short-term memory problems. What’s most demoralizing about all of this is if you had asked me to describe my better traits, I might have said something like “…energetic, funny, quick-witted, hard worker.”

Turns out, I am none of those things. Caffeine was using me as a host to express certain character traits, but without my precious green nectar I am no more energetic or witty than tectonic drift, and my appetite for hard work is the same as my appetite for chewing off my own arm. Mostly, I want to partake of my new hobby, which is lying on something yielding and clawing at my eyes.

I saw a friend yesterday who made the mistake of asking me how I was. I responded with something like “…whine, whine, caffeine-free…whine, whine, whine, endless headache…whine, George Clooney tuxedo…whine, whine, lost will to live…”

My friend nodded knowingly.

“Third day?”

I stopped my dirge and mutely nodded.

“It’ll take about a week, and then you’ll feel like a million bucks.”

Forget a million bucks. Right now, I'd take the change my pockets have fed into the couch over the last four days of involuntary naps.

Your presence is present enough.

Before I begin today’s topic, you need to know something. One morning in the past week, I fed Daughter fruit pie for breakfast. My reasoning went like this:

1. It was the last week of school, during which Daughter’s presence was required at 643 graduation-related events

2. I could either remember to buy bread or I could remember to pick up a gift certificate for her teacher but, sadly, I couldn’t remember both and

3. Apples are fruit. Pie crust is a carbohydrate, I forced broccoli into her last night, and

4. Shut up.

In short, I am forced to admit I am a mother of the cutting-corners variety. Having admitted that, may I please discuss a variety of mother who simply must be lectured? Maybe not by me; maybe they should be lectured by someone who didn’t toy with the idea of adding a scoop of ice cream to breakfast pie (you know, for the calcium). But someone needs to talk to these women.

I am talking about the women who leave their children at after-school classes and/or athletic practices and then take off for parts unknown.

I have spent several years in the après-school trenches, all smelly hallways and broken chairs. I estimate that 20% of any given population of children in a dance class/gymnastics class/aikido class/soccer practice would answer the question Where is your parent? with a shrug or “She’ll be back later”. It would be one thing if these kids were in their teens, or even nearly in their teens, but these kids are sometimes no more than seven or eight years old. In one particular place Daughter takes classes, the bathroom the kids use is at the far end of a public hallway, accessible with very little effort by anyone else in the building. Call me a worrier but I’m not comfortable ending up as the woman interviewed on local news saying mournfully, “We always knew something would happen in there.”

I waffled about writing this for a while because I fear I have a “Let them eat organic croissants” thing going on here. I know there are parents who can only afford to pay for these classes by working full-time. I am aware that running Hiphugger means I am one of those lucky women who is available to her kid when her kids needs her, without having to run it by management. But the other two women I am closest to in those dingy hallways both work full-time and they are there with me, walking other people’s kids to the bathroom. Both of these women arranged to start work at six in the morning so they can be with their kids in the afternoon, which means I admire them without qualification and can never complain to either one about feeling tired.

I’m not suggesting every single mother needs to sit there video-taping each arabesque and scrimmage. I’m not even saying a mother has to be there; there are kids in Daughter’s class who are monitored by older siblings or grandparents. There are groups of kids who are brought by one mother and the responsibility traded-off between weeks. In short, I don’t care who watches out for these kids, but shouldn’t it concern the parents that no one might be?

I’ve asked the teachers and coaches about this practice. They roll their eyes and mumble the names of the most notably absent parents, but unless it’s a private gym with specific rules about parental involvement, they can’t force the parents to attend. The amazing and maddening thing is, when these kids get injured, the parents call the next day screaming about how “You were supposed to be taking care of them! Why weren’t you doing your job?”

Sometimes it isn’t about the parent’s professional workload. Sometimes, I think, in multiple-child families, it’s about the embarrassment of riches in terms of after-school programs here in Los Angeles, and a certain panic about keeping up with the parental Joneses. Do you want to be the parent who chooses to actually sit with one child and not get the other child to Fun with Fractions?

This past week (the same week I fed Daughter breakfast pie, let us not forget), one of the more defiant and exhausting children in one of Daughter’s classes came bouncing into the park. Following behind her was a small woman with a similar nose. I hazarded, “Is Emma your daughter?”

She smiled wearily, “Yes.”

Emma ran around the field, removing field cones and kicking balls into the hedges, something she did at nearly every practice. However, since her mother hadn’t been here for months, this behavior might have been news to her. I waited for her to say something. She watched Emma as one would watch a television show.

I ventured, “You know, they aren’t allowed to do that.”

Her mother watched for another thirty seconds or so and sighed.

“Emmy, baby, this woman says you can’t do that.”

Emma kicked two more balls into the hedge and ran off to interrupt someone else’s game. The mother turned to me.

“It’s sure hard to park around here, isn’t it?”

I restrained the urge to scream “I bet slowing down at the corner and letting your daughter tuck-and-roll out of the car is MUCH more convenient!” Instead, I mooed sympathetically.

Thus encouraged, Emma’s mother told me about her afternoon schedule. It seems she has three kids, and she has them all in after-school programs. She spends nearly every afternoon dropping them off and picking them up, but because of the overlapping nature of the classes, she never actually views any class. She just drives in circles. One of her kids was at camp this week, which meant she had the time to see Emma at practice.

I was just about to start feeling a certain measure of sympathy for her schedule, if nothing else, when she said, “…and now the principal says we really should start family counseling, because he says the kids are acting out at school to get attention, which I don’t get. I mean, look how I spend every afternoon. But the only time the counselor had available was five-thirty on Fridays, and that’s Bethany’s ice-skating lesson. I don’t know where we’re going to find the time…”

I watched Emma, under the guise of getting control of the ball, push a smaller boy into the dirt, and then glance quickly in our direction. I looked over at her mother. She had never taken her eyes off the side of my head as she was talking to me.

Mad Money

I’ve had a wide-ranging blog entry to write for two weeks now. I don’t like writing posts which I know are going to sprint through several different topics before they reach their destination; writing them makes me tired. Even thinking about writing a wide-ranging blog entry makes me tired. So, you’ll be unsurprised to learn the copper bottoms of my pots and pans are spotless. Spotless. Even though I hate steel wool (my wonky nose thinks it smells like blood, and I always get bits of steel under my pathetic nail stubs), and scouring makes me feel middle-aged and used up, it’s still better than writing a wide-ranging blog entry.

The funny thing is, a wide-ranging blog shouldn’t bother me in the slightest, as it’s the only thing I ever write. I never get straight to the topic, or if I get there right away, I can’t stay on it. Say I’m writing a blog about how much I love cheese. I might think I’m keeping a laser-like focus on the subject of cheese, but the next thing I know, I’m writing about my favorite royal family.

[The Spanish branch of the Bourbons. All royal families married relatives, but these people elevated inbreeding to a whole new level. I think a couple of them married themselves. Goya painted a picture in 1800 of the extended royal family. Every single one of them, in-laws and all, have the same Bourbon weak chin, beaky nose and general appearance of a Shih-Tzu. Had King Charles a brain in his head, he would have had Goya executed for treason.]

But unless I write this particular blog, there is a very real possibility I might scour the copper entirely off the pots, so I’m diving in.

Wait, does someone hear the doorbell?

Or a sink dripping?

I should inventory which of Daughter’s socks still fit her…

Oh, all right.

Just let me make myself a cup of tea and some popcorn. And make sure each Tupperware container has a matching lid.


I could have avoided this whole mess had I not run my mouth -- a statement I hear myself making with disheartening frequency. Daughter takes several after-school classes with a friend, Amelia. Between one class and another, Amelia’s mother Amanda and I sit next to one another in hallways about five hours a week; typically on unmatched folding chairs in dim hallways. Amanda is sunny and smart with a waspish tongue, so of course I enjoy her company immensely.

Since we do spend this much time together, we cover pretty much every topic on the waterfront. For the last few months, however, the bulk of our conversation has been focused on the wedding of Amanda’s sister. Apparently, until her engagement, this sister was a pleasant woman to be around, fun company and capable of kindness. After the engagement, however, she became the FIRST WOMAN EVER TO GET MARRIED.

You know the type.

On a regular basis, Amanda would bring in the crisis of the moment, and I would revel in such classic melodramas as The Picking Of the Wedding Dress, or The Gap in The Cleavage Of the Wedding Dress That Only the Bride Saw [But Made the Dressmaker Fix Five Times], and my personal favorite: I’ve Picked My Bridesmaids But Now Have Decided I Really Can’t Stand One of Them. For weeks and weeks, Amanda was carried along her sister’s pre-nuptial avalanche while continuing to actually lead her own life. I understood Amanda was exhausted. Still, I must admit I was enjoying this wedding from my safe distance. As long as I’m not the one being forced to drive twenty-five miles with an anxious bride to confirm the chair bows are in fact sea-foam and not leaf green, I view it all as marvelous theater.

Anyway, a few weeks ago, Amanda was telling me about an upcoming wedding shower, and I frowned.

“Wait,” I said, holding up the hand which wasn’t picking a knot out of a wet shoelace. “Wasn’t the shower last weekend?”

Amanda shook her head.

“No, that was the lingerie shower. The shower next weekend is the kitchen shower. And we still have the bridesmaid spa weekend.”

“Don’t you find that a little…excessive?”

Amanda rolled her eyes. “You think?”

I clucked, “They could have eloped to Vegas and asked their friends send a ton of money in their names to help rebuild Louisiana and Mississippi. They could probably have had the library at Tulane named after them.”

Amanda nodded and we moved on to more pressing issues, probably how neither one of us had any idea what to feed our children that night. But almost immediately, I heard a squeaky, jeering voice in my head.

“Oh, yes, Saint Quinn, they could have sent money to help the less fortunate. Just like you did last week…oh, that’s right. You didn’t. Until you’re walking the walk, you might want to think about shutting your sanctimonious pie hole.”

I protested inwardly, “But…I help where I can.”

The squeaky inner voice countered, “You could easily help more. Do you have any idea how much money you piss away each week?”

Oh, that one again. I live a small and deeply un-bling life; my car was on the road during the first Clinton administration. Our house is what real estate agents might refer to as “Cozy”. My khakis were not worn down at the pockets and hem by J. Crew for preppy credibility. Nope, I wore them down myself. Last year, in fact. Before anyone starts a fund to replace my pants, they are soft and comfortable, and I don't wear them around people I need to impress.

In some ways, however, I am the casual spendthrift, and this bothers me more with each passing year. I buy hot tea constantly, even though it makes perfect sense to carry tea bags in the car, get hot water from a coffee place and just tip them for that. I eat entirely too many meals on the road; I’ll leave the house, which has all the ingredients for a bean-and-cheese burrito, only to buy one on the road a half-hour later. I buy fashion magazines even though whole trends come and go without their ever being remotely reflected in my closet (Apparently, gold shoes are back. I’ll be sitting this one out). I estimate that I waste at least thirty dollars a week.

Thirty dollars a week, times fifty two is…fifteen hundred and sixty dollars; over fifteen hundred dollars which could be spent improving something besides my caffeine withdrawal headache. Not to mention my Shout bills.

Also, it’s the principal of the consumption. It’s napkins and cups and lids and plates and bags and the extra gas to go the extra couple of blocks to get to the Mexican fast food place which has the kind of salsa I like. I started keeping a bag in the car to keep the recyclables, so I could take them home and put them in the recycling bin, which gave the car the ineffable aroma of stale onions, but the fact remained: I was wasting money and finite resources. Daughter will tell you that the thing which is guaranteed to get Mom yelling is waste.

In short, I was a stinking hypocrite, if a small one. Something had to be done.

Tomorrow, I’ll tell you what I did.

Signs of Life.

(Sorry, everyone. We're in re-runs. I plan to be up and running tomorrow)
This weekend, I found a glimpse of humanity in the most unlikely place. I speak, of course, of Rite-Aid.

Daughter spends Sunday mornings with my mother. Yesterday, after dropping her off, I chose to go wild and buy buttons and thread to make a hand-me-down viable as a dress for Daughter and not just an apron. This, like so many stupid errands, sucked up all available time without leaving any satisfaction in its wake.

The two fabric stores near my mother were closed (What? Does no one need to buy Halloween-themed quilting fabric on the day of rest?), and the Target parking lot was unsettlingly full. Between parking, locating thread and waiting forever to check out, I was going to spend an hour buying two dollars worth of goods. Or, more likely, I was going to spend two hours, one hundred dollars, and fill my trunk with Pepperidge Farm goldfish crackers, a new cordless phone and tube socks which were on sale. I needed someplace less distracting.

As if in a dream, the illuminated Rite-Aid sign shone through the fog (Actually, it was blazingly sunny and smoggy, but “shone through the exhaust” is sort of depressing). An all-purpose pharmacy! Yes, they will have buttons and thread! The thread won’t match the dress, but Daughter moves quickly, and no one will be able to see the color of the thread. Most important, I don’t need diabetes blood-testers or lawn chairs, so the chance of spending serious bills in Rite-Aid was pretty small. I pulled into the parking lot.

Did you know that only one person actually works at each Rite-Aid? She (and it’s always a woman) is up at check-out, and answers any question about where a product would be located with “That’s on Aisle 7, near the back”. I made my way to Aisle 7 and found four other people looking blank and asking one another “Do you see barbeque mitts?” “No, is that dental floss next to your hand?” This was, apparently, the holding pen. Before they bundled us into a truck and took us to the stockyards, I made my way out and starting scouring the aisles for buttons and thread.

I made my way to Aisle 8, and gazed up at the hanging sign, the one indicating what was on that aisle. Since I doubt most people wake up one morning and think “It’s all ashes unless I can make my favorite shirt a button-down again!” I assumed sewing notions weren’t going to be popular enough to merit a position on a sign. I would have to find the sewing stuff because it was near a related item. I glanced at the sign:

AUTO MOTOR OIL LIGHT BULBS ELECTRICAL

Probably not. Couldn’t hurt to walk down the aisle, though. No buttons, but I marveled at the range of weights of motor oil.

Next aisle:

HOUSEWARES MOPS DISH SOAP POTPOURRI

I stopped to consider this. Really, potpourri from a store where you can get hemorrhoid pads? Admittedly, scented things are pretty much lost on me. But don’t you just know that if you opened four different fragrances and blindfolded someone, they would describe each scent as “Newly cleaned bus station bathroom”? One had a picture of a kitten on the box. I love a cute kitten as much as the next person, but I don’t think I’ve ever wanted a room to smell like one.

I walked to the next aisle:

PET SUPPLIES PAPER TOWELS TOILET PAPER

I nodded approvingly. Clearly, whoever decides where things go has a pet. Probably a dog. Possibly a dog with separation anxiety issues. You get toilet paper for the small messes and paper towels for when the dog gets anxious and eats a seventeen-pound ham and vomits in every room in the house. Twice in the closets.

I had to see what the next aisle offered:

LIQUOR SODA WINE BEER TRASH BAGS SEWING

Success! But, I simply must contemplate what my store-designing friend was aiming for here. It was painfully clear to me that this person was the one at high-school raves putting coasters under the Rolling Rocks. Clearly, this sweet person was trying to suggest gently “It’s easy to keep your house clean while having a party! It can be fun! Look, plastic trash bags with self-ties, you don’t even need to keep those twisty things in your pocket!” But why keep the sewing stuff on this aisle? In a flash, I saw it. The end of the party, bodies and bottles strewn everywhere, the host in custody, and my new friend sitting on the last unbroken chair, frantically whip-stitching the torn hem of a friend’s skirt.

Sadly, the selection offered me nothing I could use. I might have left, but departing without finishing the Walking Tour of Signs was impossible.

I happily walked on and saw:

CANDIES COOKIES CRACKERS COOKIES CONVENIENCE FOODS CONDIMENTS COFFEE

This was taking a melancholy turn; my friend had wanted to be a poet, but due to family obligations had gone to work at the Rite-Aid organization with only these signs as a heartbreaking reminder of a talent for alliteration. I admired the use of the word “Cookie” twice. Was this a commentary on the American overwhelming need to consume? Did anyone in the organization question putting the condiments on what was obviously the fast food aisle? Was the sign- maker forced to defend his or her right to express what might have been the last gasp of creative spirit? Or was Rite-Aid just happy to find someone who could work with the word “Condiments” without giggling?

I took a breath and continued:

BABY BOTTLES BABY SHAMPOO BABY FORMULA BABY POWDER DIAPERS BABY WIPES FEMININE HYGIENE

Now, that’s just mean. No man will ever be convinced to pick up baby stuff if he thinks he’s less than five feet from a product that promises “Meadow Freshness” and has a picture of a kitten on the box…wait a minute; this is the same box they use for potpourri. There’s a second place I don’t think needs that scent. And having it next to the end-cap of Christmas lights in slightly dented boxes seemed incongruous. Perhaps placing it there was some kind of coded warning. Perhaps the Sign Maker was trying to save us all from oddly-scented products…or faulty wiring.

No wonder my friend got so bitter. I imagined him locked in a small office in the back of the store, endlessly eyeing the security monitors, watching people walk by his handiwork day after day, taking no more than a second to see if the aisle had what they needed before moving on. Well, Sign Maker, I saw it all.

For once, you were among friends.

I raised a fist in solidarity towards the first hidden camera I could find, and headed out to pick up my kid.

Paint it Black.

To see our home right now, you could assume Consort and I had the following conversation:

QUINN: I’ve been feeling like it’s been too easy to find things in the house lately. I miss the cardboard boxes filled with random objects.

CONSORT: Funny you’d mention that. I was just thinking how nice all the furniture looks when it’s crammed into the middle of the room under a plastic tarp.

QUINN: That is nice. You know what else is nice? Climbing over dining room chairs in order to get to bed.

CONSORT: Everything we own covered in fine haze of spackle dust.

Quinn takes Consort’s hand.

QUINN: That kind of life isn’t just for other people, honey. We’re caring, educated, competent people. We know where Home Depot and Loewe’s are! We can make it happen!

What the conversation actually went like was:

CONSORT: The weather is hot and dry, and I’ve got some time. I should finally paint those rooms.

QUINN: Oh, can’t we just stay with the paint chips taped on the wall?

When Consort and I first discussed repainting, he went out and got no fewer than 750 paint-sample cards. I know I exaggerate on occasion for humor and interest, so you will have to take my word for this: it was 750 paint-sample cards. After close scrutiny (Or, rather, he scrutinized, and I tried to remember to say “Huh” once in a while), we settled on six possible colors. He then taped those colors to the wall, so we could see how the colors looked at different times of day.

As I have mentioned, Consort has high standards, and I am indifferent. High standards + Indifference = Entropy. Two years later, the cards were still up. We now had a sense of how the paint would fade when exposed to two years of sunlight, but we were no closer to deciding. And then, something magical happened, something so unexpected that it shook us from our usual torpor.

A house in our neighborhood sold for a new high. The closing price was so entirely ludicrous, in fact, that the entire neighborhood first shook our heads in collective wonder at the lunacy of someone paying what they did. We then all walked into our houses and thought (a) “That means our house is worth about…holy cow! I have to call relatives in the Midwest and gloat!” and (b) “No house worth that much should have a bag of peat moss keeping the back door from swinging open when I unlock the front door”.

Within a week of the “Sold” sign going up on the new High-Priced Spread, I saw the telltale signs of home improvements going on for blocks in both directions. The mini-dumpster filled with the old backyard landscaping (That is, weeds and bricks); the Ikea cardboard shipping boxes for cabinets leaning against the recycling bin; Consort and I standing shoulder-to-shoulder, frowning at faded paint cards. Daughter walked in as we took on off the wall to squint at it more closely.

“Why are you taking the painting off the wall?”

“It’s not a painting, sweetie. We’re going to finally decide on a color to paint the room.”

“But what will happen to the paint card?”

Oh, this is tragic. It’s been here so long Daughter has grown emotionally attached to it. In fact, they had left a mark underneath where the original paint hadn’t faded. I promised her she could have all of the paint cards to love and nurture in her room. Consort and I then went back to the game we had been playing; namely, the Green Advocate and Veto Girl:

CONSORT: How about this color for the dining room?

QUINN: It’s green. I can’t look at a green wall while I eat.

CONSORT: I like this one.

QUINN: Which one?

CONSORT: Verdant, the middle color.

QUINN: Honey, that’s still green.

CONSORT: This would look great with the wood.

QUINN: That’s…avocado. That’s beyond green, that’s like…green, cubed.

I wanted a sort of tobacco, which led to a lively Pointless Spousal Discussion which can be summarized as “It will make the room look small and dark/No, it will make the room intimate, and we have this marvelous thing called electricity, and why are you holding the green paint samples again?”

I think Consort preferred me indifferent.

After a protracted conversation, we settled on the major color in the living room, the color in the dining room, and the kitchen. Consort then got all excited about accent and trim colors, and I regressed to my usual indolence, which means things got settled quickly. And now, he paints. Or, rather, he cleans and spackles and sands and grumbles and makes unexpected trips to the paint store and wears “Painting clothes”, by which he means “Clothes you have been after me to get rid of for five years, and I managed to keep only by promising you that they were for just this occasion”. At odd moments, he paints.

My part is to help move furniture as required and to take Daughter out to adventures on painting days (I demanded low-VOC paint, but I am still not convinced a freshly painted room won’t eventually compromise her ability to drive a stick-shift). The other part of my job is to come in when a room has been painted and sincerely say “This is really lovely. Thanks to you, sweetheart, our house isn’t nearly as depressing and squalid as it used to be. You have spackle in your ear.”

I’m looking for the greeting card which expresses that sentiment.

Signs of Life.

This weekend, I found a glimpse of humanity in the most unlikely place. I speak, of course, of Rite-Aid.

Daughter spends Sunday mornings with my mother. Yesterday, after dropping her off, I chose to go wild and buy buttons and thread to make a hand-me-down viable as a dress for Daughter and not just an apron. This, like so many stupid errands, sucked up all available time without leaving any satisfaction in its wake.

The two fabric stores near my mother were closed (What? Does no one need to buy Halloween-themed quilting fabric on the day of rest?), and the Target parking lot was unsettlingly full. Between parking, locating thread and waiting forever to check out, I was going to spend an hour buying two dollars worth of goods. Or, more likely, I was going to spend two hours, one hundred dollars, and fill my trunk with Pepperidge Farm goldfish crackers, a new cordless phone and tube socks which were on sale. I needed someplace less distracting.

As if in a dream, the illuminated Rite-Aid sign shone through the fog (Actually, it was blazingly sunny and smoggy, but “shone through the exhaust” is sort of depressing). An all-purpose pharmacy! Yes, they will have buttons and thread! The thread won’t match the dress, but Daughter moves quickly, and no one will be able to see the color of the thread. Most important, I don’t need diabetes blood-testers or lawn chairs, so the chance of spending serious bills in Rite-Aid was pretty small. I pulled into the parking lot.

Did you know that only one person actually works at each Rite-Aid? She (and it’s always a woman) is up at check-out, and answers any question about where a product would be located with “That’s on Aisle 7, near the back”. I made my way to Aisle 7 and found four other people looking blank and asking one another “Do you see barbeque mitts?” “No, is that dental floss next to your hand?” This was, apparently, the holding pen. Before they bundled us into a truck and took us to the stockyards, I made my way out and starting scouring the aisles for buttons and thread.

I made my way to Aisle 8, and gazed up at the hanging sign, the one indicating what was on that aisle. Since I doubt most people wake up one morning and think “It’s all ashes unless I can make my favorite shirt a button-down again!” I assumed sewing notions weren’t going to be popular enough to merit a position on a sign. I would have to find the sewing stuff because it was near a related item. I glanced at the sign:

AUTO MOTOR OIL LIGHT BULBS ELECTRICAL

Probably not. Couldn’t hurt to walk down the aisle, though. No buttons, but I marveled at the range of weights of motor oil.

Next aisle:

HOUSEWARES MOPS DISH SOAP POTPOURRI

I stopped to consider this. Really, potpourri from a store where you can get hemorrhoid pads? Admittedly, scented things are pretty much lost on me. But don’t you just know that if you opened four different fragrances and blindfolded someone, they would describe each scent as “Newly cleaned bus station bathroom”? One had a picture of a kitten on the box. I love a cute kitten as much as the next person, but I don’t think I’ve ever wanted a room to smell like one.

I walked to the next aisle:

PET SUPPLIES PAPER TOWELS TOILET PAPER

I nodded approvingly. Clearly, whoever decides where things go has a pet. Probably a dog. Possibly a dog with separation anxiety issues. You get toilet paper for the small messes and paper towels for when the dog gets anxious and eats a seventeen-pound ham and vomits in every room in the house. Twice in the closets.

I had to see what the next aisle offered:

LIQUOR SODA WINE BEER TRASH BAGS SEWING

Success! But, I simply must contemplate what my store-designing friend was aiming for here. It was painfully clear to me that this person was the one at high-school raves putting coasters under the Rolling Rocks. Clearly, this sweet person was trying to suggest gently “It’s easy to keep your house clean while having a party! It can be fun! Look, plastic trash bags with self-ties, you don’t even need to keep those twisty things in your pocket!” But why keep the sewing stuff on this aisle? In a flash, I saw it. The end of the party, bodies and bottles strewn everywhere, the host in custody, and my new friend sitting on the last unbroken chair, frantically whip-stitching the torn hem of a friend’s skirt.

Sadly, the selection offered me nothing I could use. I might have left, but departing without finishing the Walking Tour of Signs was impossible.

I happily walked on and saw:

CANDIES COOKIES CRACKERS COOKIES CONVENIENCE FOODS CONDIMENTS COFFEE

This was taking a melancholy turn; my friend had wanted to be a poet, but due to family obligations had gone to work at the Rite-Aid organization with only these signs as a heartbreaking reminder of a talent for alliteration. I admired the use of the word “Cookie” twice. Was this a commentary on the American overwhelming need to consume? Did anyone in the organization question putting the condiments on what was obviously the fast food aisle? Was the sign- maker forced to defend his or her right to express what might have been the last gasp of creative spirit? Or was Rite-Aid just happy to find someone who could work with the word “Condiments” without giggling?

I took a breath and continued:

BABY BOTTLES BABY SHAMPOO BABY FORMULA BABY POWDER DIAPERS BABY WIPES FEMININE HYGIENE

Now, that’s just mean. No man will ever be convinced to pick up baby stuff if he thinks he’s less than five feet from a product that promises “Meadow Freshness” and has a picture of a kitten on the box…wait a minute; this is the same box they use for potpourri. There’s a second place I don’t think needs that scent. And having it next to the end-cap of Christmas lights in slightly dented boxes seemed incongruous. Perhaps placing it there was some kind of coded warning. Perhaps the Sign Maker was trying to save us all from oddly-scented products…or faulty wiring.

No wonder my friend got so bitter. I imagined him locked in a small office in the back of the store, endlessly eyeing the security monitors, watching people walk by his handiwork day after day, taking no more than a second to see if the aisle had what they needed before moving on. Well, Sign Maker, I saw it all.

For once, you were among friends.

I raised a fist in solidarity towards the first hidden camera I could find, and headed out to pick up my kid.

May-laise

September 7, 2004: Daughter and I arrive at school at 7:55 a.m.

May 4, 2005: I wake up Daughter at 7:55 a.m.

That should give you a hint of the inertia I am battling these days.

School begins promptly at 8:30. I draw some comfort from the fact that when we arrived at school today at 8:28, only five other children (out of her class of 22) had arrived. Right now, most of my friends with children are pretty much over the whole school year business.

We’re over getting them out the door in the morning; a process that is best compared to pushing tapioca pudding uphill with a colander. You don’t really have a full understanding of the concept of eternity until you watch a small child eat a bowl of cereal.

We’re over discussing elementary school options and passing along rumors about the selection process for certain hot schools (“…I hear they’re only interested in same-sex parents with woodworking skills.”).

Certain members of my crowd are over being wait-listed for their school of choice -- a state they can remain in until the first week of September, when the enrollment finally gets settled. I sometimes imagine how it happens: one child at the hottest school in town has a parent who gets transferred suddenly. The mother calls the headmistress apologetically -- so sorry, but Branford is coming with us to Laos, so he won’t be going to your school, which starts in two days. At that moment, every mother in Los Angeles with a kid on a wait-list feels a rippling breeze as the wait-list phone numbers are cracked open. Child #1 is offered a spot at School A, which opens a spot at School B, which is quickly filled by Child #2, and so on throughout the city. Money changes hands, regulation shoes are quickly bought, and before 18 hours have passed, the game of Private School Musical Chairs has answered the prayers of forty or so families. The parents of the still wait-listed kids come together to do the traditional autumn dance: Elementary Schools Are All Pretty Much Alike and We’re Fine Where We Are.

I am certainly over the lunch-box. Please note the plummeting quality of Daughter’s lunchtime menu:

September: Home-baked goods, sliced vegetables, note of encouragement.

January: Thawed pizza slice, box of organic juice, Fruit Roll-up.

Today: Applesauce cup, breakfast bar, pretzels.

Another week and I will be sending her shirt cardboard smeared with jelly. Clearly, I had to get to the grocery store before the state intervened. After school, we headed off to the store. Once inside, Daughter saw a display and said prayerfully, “Nuts”.

“Go on,” I said kindly. “Pick whatever kind you want to eat”. It’s not Aristotle Onassis naming a yacht after his daughter, but I felt reasonably munificent. Daughter beetled over and looked thoughtfully at the Brazil nuts while disdaining the walnuts. I then noticed a woman in her 70’s watching the whole thing. She had the faintest trace of disdain in her brow. Her gaze lingered.

“My daughter likes nuts” I volunteered, because it pleases me to state the obvious.

“When my kids were young,” she said flatly “they ate whatever was put in front of them”

Oh, no. A parenting expert. With women of a certain age who know everything but A) your kid or B) your situation, you can either start a screaming catfight or roll over and show your white maternal underbelly right away.

I rolled.

“Well,” I said neutrally, “I’m sure your children turned out wonderfully. Maybe moms these days give their kids too much of a say”.

Having taken away all of her fun, she came back with a resigned “That’s what I tell my daughter”. I grabbed my Daughter, by now holding her bag of pecans, and walked off. Having bitten my tongue as a mark of respect for an older person, I am now going to rail at her in the comfort of my own blog.

“Lady, let me give you a few pertinent facts. First of all, she doesn’t pick all her food. If she did, our kitchen would contain only macaroni and cheese, candy hearts and toast. She does get a few situations where she may be in control, like picking what kind of nuts she has. What the hell do I care? Nuts have all those…things I am currently forgetting the names of which are good for you. And yes, I could remind her of my hegemony over her by sanctioning her snack food, but if I don’t give her the occasional taste of autonomy she will run off at 14 with her gym teacher. So, in closing, if you want to remind someone my age about how be a mother, please call your daughter. But she’s probably blocked your number!”

You want to question my judgment? I suggest coming back in September.

Just the Way You Look Tonight

When I first met this particular friend of Consort, two years ago, he and his girlfriend were engaged-to-be-engaged. We saw them last year, the week after they got engaged, and heard the happy details of the wedding. We got the “Save the date” notice four months ago, the invitation two months ago, and an email confirmation a month ago. Why am I telling you all this, unless I think you’re fascinated by organized people? Because I had simply no excuse for looking aghast day before yesterday and howling “Why didn’t someone remind me that we’re going to a wedding this weekend?”

I flung open my closet doors, and stared in horror. My wardrobe is suitable for washing cars or walking on a treadmill at a really shabby YMCA. I have nothing even remotely dressy for warm weather. For a minute, I dimly hoped that the invitation for an evening wedding at four-star hotel would read “Dress: Casual, poster paint stains preferred”. I found the invitation and my hopes were dashed. This was going to involve shopping.

After a certain time in your life, dressy clothes are no longer a wondrous adventure in expressing the feminine, alluring parts of yourself: they are damage control. If you are anything like me, you have a photographic graveyard of ill-advised evening choices. Here is the slide-show:

(click)

Here I am in my backless dress, my one attempt at going braless. Please note how my arm is up to my elbow down the front of my dress. I was trying to create a strapless shelf bra with my forearm. Later in the evening, I snuck into the kitchen and took some of the string they use to truss up turkeys and created a sling-like contraption.

(click)

This one I call “Why do I keep wearing black to formal events? I should try color”. Please note how the color, which was a lovely bright tangerine in the store, became traffic-cone orange in evening light. People keeping shading their eyes to look at me. I eventually draped myself in my date’s jacket, claiming to be cold, just to create an area not capable of scorching the retina.

(click)

Yes, I am in this picture, but I can understand the confusion. I chose a cocktail dress with a pattern. Unfortunately, the pattern exactly matched the wallpaper in the reception room. Look carefully and you can see a blur: that was my arm, which I kept waving so the caterers would stop leaning extra chairs against me.

(click)

This was my most recent bad purchase. After seeing several tweed suits being featured in Vogue, I bought a pink one for two winter events this year. Sadly, it didn’t occur to me that the reason the models looked so winning and adorable in this look, besides being a foot taller than I am, is that they were fifteen. Post-pubescent girls in matronly outfits can look sweetly incongruous. A woman who is well into her thirties in a pink tweed suit looks like she is sixty. Several men offered to find me a chair and a defibrillator.


And yet, I shop again. But this time, I am shopping FRENCH. I am going to find something classic, timeless and expensive as hell, with the unwritten expectation of wearing it for the next forty years and being buried in it. I entered the department store, went to the “Hemorrhage Money Here” section, and tried on a navy suit. Fitted jacket, straight skirt, nothing that said “This year” or “Next year”, “Ingénue” or “Crone”. What it did say, and quite loudly, was “Flight Attendant”. I tried on a red suit: unless Consort runs for the Senate from a conservative Southern state, I am going to look a little dowdy. The black suit was timeless, all right: I looked exactly like some pictures I have seen of women being processed at Ellis Island, circa 1890. I looked as terrified as they did, because it was starting to dawn on me that this wasn’t working. I had booked in exactly two hours to find my inner Frenchwoman, and she was off somewhere having a Pernod and sneering at me.

Scarf, I thought desperately. French women do things with scarves, and everyone thinks it’s neat. I put the navy suit back on, and went to the scarf department and grabbed some colorful silky bits. I tied one around my shoulders, leaving it draped to the side.

The look said -

“Hi! I got a coffee stain on my shoulder, but you won’t even notice it now!”.

I moved the knot to the back, putting the fullness in the front-

“I’m eating lobster!”

I moved the knot to the front, putting the fullness in the back-

“I’m a Girl Scout Leader!”

I yanked that scarf off of my body before it hollered anything else at me.

When it came right down to it, I couldn’t buy any of those suits. They were perfectly fine, if you like giving up. Because that is what it felt like, failure. These suits said I am no longer capable of prettiness, just practicality. In the war between the sexes, I would become Switzerland. It’s unrealistic to expect an evening outfit to transform you but, damn it, it’s the only unrealistic fashion goal I have left. I gave up thinking I could wear boy-cut bathing suit bottoms, metallic eye-shadow or ankle-high boots with skirts. I need to keep the moment from every cheesy movie where our dowdy heroine comes down the stairs in her formal dress, finally wearing her contacts, and her date forgets what he was saying. Yes, I know, those characters are in high school. Getting dressed up in the evening is all about high school. And I will find my prom dress before Saturday.

Bodies in Motion

Conversation this morning:

It’s time to get up.

I’m tired.

I know, but it’s time to get up. You don’t want to be late for school, do you?

I think I’m sick. I coughed last night, and now I feel like throwing up.

Your forehead is cool, you’re fine.

You are sooooo unfair!!!

Quinn, get up.


Some of my most heated arguments are internal because right now, I am an unwilling participant in nearly all aspects of my life. Any suggestion from anyone to do anything draws a reflexive sigh and a pouty shoulder slump that hasn’t been seen since I was 14. If Jesus, Buddha and Yahweh showed up on my doorstep, arm in omnipotent arm, and invited me to lunch my response right now would be, “well, okay, but that means I have to find my shoes.”

It’s not depression. I have felt that black beast on occasion, and this isn’t it. It’s that my daughter is enriched and I am depleted. Because I have an only child and we live in a city full of neat things to do and learn, I have spent the better part of the last three years driving to distant neighborhoods and looking for signs that say things like Puppet Making for Pre-Schoolers or Love Them Lizards! A Herpetological Adventure for 3-5 year olds.

I do understand how the brain works. [Daughter took a weekend class called Nuts About the Nervous System and I picked up some facts. Sad fact number one: she is not going to remember any of these classes.]

Nor is this, I swear to you, a closet fixation to tee her up for Harvard, with Yale as her safety. It’s like this: an ex-boyfriend once described me as “idling higher” than anyone he ever knew. Apparently, I just have to keep moving, and giving birth didn’t change this. And, as an alcoholic probably isn’t well-served by living in New Orleans, the compulsively mobile person with a child shouldn’t live in Los Angeles. Even if you do nothing, you are still in your car for at least an hour every day. And my baby and I, we certainly don’t do nothing. If it’s cheap and age-appropriate, you’ve seen us there. Or, you have seen me circling the block outside, my mouth contorted into a spasm of rage as I stalk a parking space.

Of course, even I have a limit for enrichment activities. The thought of her schedule today makes me want to lie down on the floor, whimper, and kick my legs. And today’s a relatively simple day -- two after-school classes, but they are in the same place, consecutively. I hate that the trunk of my car looks like the dumpster behind Capezio (I tried describing it as a Capezio warehouse but Consort said unsympathetically “No, a warehouse is organized"). I am tired of finding hobbies that can be done while sitting in unstable folding chairs in narrow hallways. I know, I built this little life. But now I have to find a way to pare it down or, failing that, finesse an open-ended Valium prescription.

Cutting back isn’t going to be easy. I have helped create a child whose first response upon seeing something new and interesting is “I should take a class in that!” And who doesn’t want to encourage that kind of passion for learning?

Me.

So, I am now going to do my impersonation of Martin Luther, and nail some new rules up on the Church of Enrichment.

1. Daughter is taking Spanish in school. Ergo, I am not responsible for finding her a class in Mandarin, no matter how pretty she thinks the Chinese restaurant menus look.
2. Daughter may take one dance class a week. Said dance class should be proximal to my house. No matter how much she may like the outfits, I am not driving across town to a Flamenco class. She may click castanets at home, if she feels so inclined.
3. I understand that Math scores are improved by learning piano. However, I do not have the strength right now to take on any activity that comes with a nightly nag (“I want to hear you practicing young lady, and I mean now!”).
4. If the sports equipment is taller than she is, I don’t have to think about it yet. No tennis, no skiing, no fencing. This also includes French Horn and Harp.


Down time is important. Boredom, for children, is part of growing up. The rest of her life is not going to be centered on feeding her fun facts and themed snacks. I now understand that a mother who doesn’t have to take yoga to get rid of cheap-chair sciatica is a better mother in the long run.

As soon as we finish the Shakespeare for Tots season, and the History of Rabbits in Painting class at the museum, we are so kicking back.